Just like our Homemade Vanilla Pudding recipe, this one is tried and true and worth another share. We wanted to highlight it again as another school year is approaching (I know, I don’t want to talk about it either!). This is a great recipe for an after school snack or to pack in a lunch.

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Looking for some fun activities to do with your kids this summer? I’ve enjoyed 22 summers with kids (and counting!), so I certainly have a few ideas to share! Stay tuned during the next few weeks as we provide all kinds of suggestions for making your summer with your kids meaningful. (Subscribe here so you won’t miss out!) Today’s idea: Make Donuts. Who can say no to that?

Here’s what’s great about making donuts with your kids (besides the fact that everyone gets to eat donuts!):

This activity gives you a chance to help your kids learn more about reading a recipe, measuring ingredients, rolling, cutting, and kitchen safety. Our favorite recipes are listed below!

Looking for more help as you pull your kids into the kitchen with you?

Make Donuts ~ Read a Book

Summer is an awesome time to spend more time reading fun books with your kids!

Have you read Homer Price? It’s a great read-aloud for your family! There’s a great chapter in the book about Homer making donuts with his uncle’s donut machine – SUCH a fun chapter! The donuts got out of control!! After you read that chapter, you’ll have no choice but to get into the kitchen and make donuts with your kids!

Here are a couple pictures of my four oldest boys enjoying the donuts we made after reading Homer Price many years ago. Aw, they were so little! (And Malachi was apparently playing dress-up too!)

Heat oil in skillet or electric skillet (enough oil to cover the bottom of the skillet about ¼ inch).

Place donuts into the hot oil to fry for 2-3 minutes on each side.

Remove from skillet and place on a paper towel lined plate.

Sprinkle a mixture of sugar and cinnamon, or powdered sugar over the hot donuts.

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Want to make your donuts even healthier? How about adding a veggie – without anyone noticing? Whole Grain Pumpkin Donuts for the win! Truly, when you add pumpkin puree to donuts it not only adds nourishment but adds moisture and delicious flavor too! Find the recipe here:

Stir powdered sugar and cocoa together in a bowl. In a small saucepan, melt butter. Add water and bring to a boil. Pour boiling water and butter into powdered sugar and cocoa. Add vanilla. Beat with hand mixer until frosting is combined.

How about a donut glaze that is much lower in sugar!

Whisk ingredients together on the stove until smooth. Drizzle over warm donuts!

Get out the Cookie Cutters!

Regular circle donuts and donut holes are fine. But we can make donuts even more fun when we use cookie cutters to make them into fun shapes! Any cookie cutters will do. Make stars during the Fourth of July. Make animal shapes after a visit to the zoo. Make hearts and deliver them to someone you love. Oh the fun you can have!

Share with Others

Did you see the sentence above about using a heart-shaped cookie cutter to make heart-shaped donuts to share with someone you love?

One of the best ways to spend time with your kids this summer is to SERVE others with them. Perhaps one way you can serve together is to make donuts and deliver them to someone who could use the blessing of friendship and fellowship!

Ready to have some summer fun with your kids? Head into the kitchen and make donuts! Take pictures and let us know how it goes!

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There are so many wonderful reasons to love the month of May. The school year ends (for most), the frigid weather finally becomes pleasant (in Nebraska), and strawberries are everywhere (in bowls, in plates, in my hand…). I will now introduce you to my most recent recipe experiment involving strawberries: Easy Low Sugar Strawberry Cream Cheese Cake.

This cake is moist. It’s flavorful. It’s low in sugar. It’s whole grain. It offers the wonderful taste of early summer joy. And friends, it is topped with Cream Cheese Frosting. I declare that to be the MVP of this cake – along with the strawberries, of course!

If you’ve been around here long, you know that I’ve taken the liberty of cutting down the sugar in many recipes, making sure they still taste amazing. I believe a lower sugar ratio is something we can get our taste buds used to! I recommend cutting back on sugar gradually, starting with homemade desserts and muffins.

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We all know too much sugar isn’t good for us. Oh, but why must it taste so goooood???? It’s ok! We understand and we’re here to help. Here are some suggestions for how to cut back on sugar that are actually not terribly difficult!

How to Cut Back on Sugar

I’ll give you a step-by-step. BUT!!! If the order of these suggestions is too difficult for you, don’t give up and walk away! Instead, pick just one thing from the list that you feel is doable and go for it. Then once you’ve mastered that one thing, go on to another one. Put these in any order that works for you!

1. Wean yourself off of sugary drinks.

Are you drinking your sugar? Oooof, guzzling down the sugar in the form of soda or juice can be really hard on your body and your teeth. It’s amazing how much sugar is in just one cup of juice or soda. Work on weaning yourself back. You can do it!

Consider enjoying sugary treats only in the form of food instead of drinks. That way you can enjoy your sweet treats more, but will consume less sugar!
Suggestion:These Javita drinks are delicious, healthy, and help provide a sweet drink that actually benefits your health!! My favorites are the Peach Mango (I drink one every morning to help with digestion), the Defend (I drink one every day to keep my immune system strong), and the Flex (I drink one every day to help with inflammation). I love that they taste sweet and are FUN!!! (Get more details about these drinks here.)

2. Put less sugar in your tea and coffee.

My southern sweet tea drinker friends are not gonna like hearing this one. ;) But what if, when making a gallon of tea, you start gradually cutting back on the amount of sugar you add? Your taste buds probably won’t even notice the difference if it’s just a little bit at a time.

And your coffee? Can you gradually start spooning in less sugar or pouring in less sugary, flavored creamer? If you like your coffee to be creamy and the idea of cutting back on creamer doesn’t appeal to you, I’d suggest still cutting back on creamer, but adding heavy whipping cream or half-and-half to provide the creaminess and even some natural sweetness!

Suggestion: Try adding a squeeze of this Stevia Sweetened Chocolate Syrup, plus some heavy whipping cream into your coffee! From college kid to adult to teen – everyone I’ve made coffee for like this has LOVED it and had no idea there was no added sugar!

3. Only eat candy on special occasions, or work to give it up altogether.

This is a tough one if you have some candy favorites that you consider staples for traveling or game watching or TV watching. But I’ve found that eating candy really ruins a persons desire for real fruit and other naturally sweetened foods. (Right? Who wants a real strawberry after eating licorice?)

Try to cut back on making candy a snack, and maybe only treat yourself on a special occasion here and there. Or stop eating it altogether so you can enjoy other sweet treats that aren’t so high in sugar!

Suggestion: Buy something fun like a box of this variety of Fruit Leather and let it become your “candy.” Now that I’ve stopped eating so much sugar, these really taste like candy to me – but they are 100% fruit!

4. Gradually add less sugar when baking homemade treats.

A few years ago I decided to start experimenting with regular cake, cookie, and muffin recipes to see if cutting back on the called-for amount of sugar would still turn out a good baked good. I have been so pleasantly surprised and pleased with this experiment! It doesn’t take nearly as much sugar as a recipe typically calls for to turn out a delicious cake, cookie, or muffin!

Don’t want your family to rebel against your cookies? Again, I recommend cutting back gradually until everyone’s taste buds have adapted to the lower sugar content. After a while, you’ll find that a treat made with full sugar will taste too sweet! How about that?

Why cut back on sugar?

Sugar can make us fat. Boo, I know. Our bodies only need a small amount of sugar each day to help us function properly. After that small amount is used up, any extra we consume has no use inside our bodies, so it goes to our fat reserves. Yuck.

Sugar wrecks our teeth. But we already knew that.

Sugar tricks us into not eating other more nutritious foods. As I mentioned before, who wants a real fresh strawberry after you’ve eaten licorice? When we eat sweet treats, we are less hungry for nourishing, whole foods. So our bodies become depleted of nutrients, and we are more likely to get sick (see #1) or fat (see #2).

Well, that wasn’t much fun to read, was it? Never fear…

Cutting back on sugar is possible!

If I can do it, you can do it! Set some small goals for yourself and get started. You’ll be surprised by how one change can lead to another! Ready, set, go!

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Since I just shared a list of fun ways to enjoy coffee, I thought it was fitting to share a list of lightly sweetened cookie recipes to go with your coffee. Or your tea. Or water. Or milk. Choose your cookie – choose your beverage!

I love a barely sweet treat with my coffee. The recipes listed below are made with whole grains, wholesome fats, and have low sugar content. I have simply adapted our favorite cookie recipes through the years to make them lower in sugar while still keeping them delicious!

As a bonus, it is worth sharing my favorite flourless brownie recipes!

These are also low in sugar, and are completely grain free. I can’t get over how delicious these are. The trick to keeping them moist is to remove them from the oven BEFORE they appear to be done. If you leave them in the oven too long, they’ll get dry. But remove them when they are still a bit gooey and you are golden!

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You all know I’m not into anything fancy. The simpler the better when it comes to pretty much everything from food to clothes to schedules. So it probably doesn’t surprise you that I took my basic Sweet and Simple Butter Cookies recipe and added one tiny ingredient to make these Sweet and Simple Cranberry Cookies. Hmmm, I bet you can’t guess which ingredient I added. (Indeed, my ways are so mysterious.)

I’m not a big fan of raisins in my cookies. But adding dried cranberries to this simple butter cookie? Well, that takes them up a notch without adding any effort. Phew, no added effort? Well, that’s a relief. We cannot be expected to add effort to our cookie-baking endeavors. That takes all the fun out of eating a cookie.

Oh! But don’t you worry about me giving you permission to eat a cookie. These are low in sugar, with just a little extra added sugar when we toss in the dried cranberries. And check out how few ingredients these have? Just 5 simple items to grab to make these delights!

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What’s your favorite kind of cookie? Ever tried cutting down the sugar in the recipe to see how it turns out?

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I served these Low Sugar Peanut Butter Cheesecake Balls to a group of college kids, wondering what they would think since they were made with stevia. Five out of five college students were none the wiser, and declared this treat to be delicious. After all, how can we go wrong when cream cheese, peanut butter, and chocolate chips are the main ingredients?

I love having several jars of Homemade Peanut Butter on hand to use in quick recipes like this one. And of course, I like having several packages of cream cheese in the fridge, seeing as cream cheese makes everything better.

By the way, have you tried this Simple Cream Cheese Corn yet? Just when you think sweet corn can’t taste any better than it already does, you add cream cheese and it turns into a plate full of amazingness!

But back to the Peanut Butter Cheesecake Balls. Our 5-year old Bonus Boy and I were looking through Pinterest (a dangerous idea when you’re hungry) and found a recipe similar to this one. Since I had all the ingredients on hand to tweak it into a healthy treat for us, he and I got started mixing these up right away. Success! And according to college kids who didn’t know these were on the healthier side, no one can tell these are low in sugar. Double success!

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Because I am your friend, I am sharing this Delicious Low Sugar Chocolate Bundt Cake with Chocolate Glaze just in time for Valentine’s Day. See, you can make this cake any time, any day. But Valentine’s Day is sort of an excuse to eat chocolate. So this cake recipe comes to you just in time!

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My first attempt at creating Low Sugar Peanut Butter Brownies actually turned out too sweet! This was shocking seeing as I had cut the sugar down tremendously from the original recipe I had found to give me the inspiration. I cut it down even more and voila. Peanut Butter Brownie perfection!

I love that cutting down sugar in recipes still turns out awesome treats. These are as simple as can be, perfectly moist (as long as you don’t overbake them), and made even more fabulous because of the peanut butter whipped frosting we spread over the top.

Make yourself a batch, pour yourself a glass of milk, sit back, and enjoy!

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Is it just me, or can we all agree that when we add cream cheese to a recipe, it will become extra – top notch – amazing? May I interest you, then, in these Cream Cheese Cut Out Cookies? Don’t worry – they are low in sugar. Oh, but also don’t worry – they still taste incredible!

You’re going to want to add this recipe to your list of keepers! We make these Cream Cheese Cut Out Cookies for just about every holiday. Pumpkin shapes in the fall, trees and stockings at Christmas time, and hearts for Valentine’s day. If we’re really feeling crazy, sometimes we’ll make them randomly in June. It just so happens that we have a cookie cutter in the shape of Mickey Mouse. June’s as good a month as any to make a Mickey cookie.

Since I’m not much into sugar anymore, I like eating these as-is, without frosting. My kids, of course, prefer to frost theirs. In case you need some low sugar (or high sugar) frosting recipes, I will share them below. But for now…

In a small saucepan combine butter, cocoa, milk, and honey. Cook and stir over low heat until ingredients are well combined and mixture begins to thicken slightly. Removed from heat. Stir in vanilla. Spread onto cookies.